Quad Nets:
Material Foundations for Thermal Device Models of Brains

Short Abstract

A Quad Net (QN) is a proposed physical material made up of interconnecting tiles. A pulsing elemental device occupies each tile and interacts through junctions with its neighbors. Pieces of QN material can be worked into device parts, e.g., a Toroidal Quad Net or TQN that maintains circulating waves of pulses. QN device parts are joined together to make up assemblies of increasing sizes in which various pulse patterns ("phases") are maintained.

During operations, a QN device part cyclically falls into silence, then re-activates, selecting an actual phase from possible phases and maintaining the selected phase as the cycle proceeds. Phase selections are coordinated within assemblies of device parts; and phases are nested within larger phases. In imitation of neuronal signals in brains, some phases ("objects") organize sensations and other phases ("acts") drive muscles. Cyclically selected patterns of pulses in assemblies of QN device parts are models of sensory-motor activities in brains of animals.